Updates using urls and query strings

Rails
1

I have a task model and in the controller there is this code that sets
the date a task was completed on if params[:completed] comes back as
true and sets the completed_by field to nil (ie incomplete) if params
[:completed] comes back as false:

@task.completed_on = params[:completed] ? Time.now.to_s(:db) : nil

Users can edit the task and this code is in the edit view - allowing
the user to tick the box to mark a task as complete or untick it to
change the task’s status back to incomplete:
<%= check_box_tag :completed, “1”, @task.completed_on %>

This all works fine. However, if I try to use AJAX to access the
update controller directly with the following urls:

/tasks/3?completed=true, _method = PUT
/tasks/3?completed=false, _method = PUT

The first one works, but the second doesn’t reset the completed_by
field back to nil.

Does anybody know why this isn’t working? I’ve a feeling it might be
because ruby is seeing ‘false’ as a string and therefore ‘true’.

cheers,

DAZ

2

Does anybody know why this isn’t working? I’ve a feeling it might be
because ruby is seeing ‘false’ as a string and therefore ‘true’.

Precisely. all parameters are just strings, it’s up to you to coerce
it to a boolean value

3

Thanks for the reply Frederick, I just have two questions:

  1. How exactly do I coerce it into a boolean value - is there a best-
    practice way of doing this?

  2. How come this problem doesn’t occur when the value is submitted via
    the form from the edit action?

cheers,

DAZ

On Dec 13, 5:28 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]

4

On Dec 13, 7:32 pm, DAZ [email protected] wrote:

Thanks for the reply Frederick, I just have two questions:

  1. How exactly do I coerce it into a boolean value - is there a best-
    practice way of doing this?

doesn’t need to be any more complicated than if params[:foo] ==
‘true’ …

  1. How come this problem doesn’t occur when the value is submitted via
    the form from the edit action?

if you were just using update_attributes then it understands this sort
of stuff IIRC.

Fred

5

Cheers Fred, that worked great!

DAZ

On Dec 13, 11:12 pm, Frederick C. [email protected]